Prison Pipeline

MISSION STATEMENT

Prison Pipeline is a radio program dedicated to educating the public about the Oregon criminal justice system. Our goal is to present a unique understanding of the criminal justice system, address the root causes of crime, and challenge the status quo. We seek to promote awareness and activism in order to foster a safe, healthy, and just society.
Tune in every Monday evening at 6:30 to hear our hosts Karen James, Adam Carpinelli, Amy Johnson and Ruth Kovacs explore the Oregon justice system with a variety of guests. Hosts rotate weekly. Prison Pipeline's engineers are Danielle Parks and Michael Ftaclas.

Adam Carpinelli will interview Dan Shea, a long time activist for human rights, anti-war, Latin American Solidarity, GI resistance and more. Dan is an active member of Veterans for Peace (VFP) Chapter 72. VFP is a global organization of Military Veterans and allies whose collective efforts are to build a culture of peace with140 chapters worldwide educating the public and advocating for a dismanting of the war economy. The discussion will focus on the intersections of the Prison and Military Industrial complexes. The connections between the two are highly overlooked linking U.S. imperialism, the global economy and the hyper-militarization of the police. http://www.vfpchapter72.org./ http://www.veteransforpeace.org/

On February 9th at Portland State University Maya Schenwar read from and discussed her book, Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn't Work and How We Can Do Better. Maya's book looks at how prison breaks community ties and enacts violence which continues after release, making communities less safe and in particular, decimating communities of color. Maya's book envisions a future beyond incarceration where our responses to harm are community based and foster connection and reconciliation rather than isolation. She profiles community based initiatives that are beginning to make this vision a reality. Maya Schenwar is the editor-in-chief of independent news and commentary source, Truthout (truth-out.org).

Karen James with Bob Joondeph, Executive Director of Disability Rights Oregon. DRO is an organization that works to uphold the legal rights of people with disabilities. Disability Rights Oregon will introduce a bill that will stop solitary confinement for persons with serious mental illness incarcerated in Oregon prisons. Although the United Nations calls it torture, 80,000 prisoners across the United States are in solitary confinement. This includes our youth, pregnant women, and people with mental illness locked in small, windowless cells with no contact for the major part of each day. The negative psychological effects of isolation are well documented.
Disability Rights Oregon http://droregon.org/

Adam Carpinelli will interview Alejandro Luis Molina the Committee Coordinator for the National Boricua Human Rights Network which focuses on the liberation of Political Prisoners from the Puerto Rican independence movement. Molina will focus the discussion on Oscar Lopez Rivera who was forced underground in 1975 with other comrades after the Justice Department identified him as an FALN leader. On May 29, 1981, he was arrested, the FBI calling him one of America's most feared fugitives. At trial, he refused to participate, declaring himself a POW. In 1981, he was convicted of armed robbery, miscellaneous charges, and seditious conspiracy - sedition pertaining to actions to incite insurrection or rebellion; conspiracy by working with others to achieve it.

Ruth Kovacs interviews Noelle Hanrahan from Prison Radio about Mumia Abu-Jamal and legislation (HB2533) called the "Revictimization Relief Act" that would allow victims, District Attorneys, and the Attorney General to sue people who have been convicted of "personal injury" crimes for speaking out publicly if it causes the victim of the crime "mental anguish." The bill was written in response to political prisoner Mumia's commencement speech at Goddard College, and is a clear attempt to silence Mumia and other prisoners and formerly incarcerated people.http://www.prisonradio.org

In honor of Martin Luther King JR day, host Amy Johnson gets the perspectives of Portland's Radical Elders Reading Group. Guests LJ, Arthur and Grace have been activists since the Civil Rights era, they share the inequalities in incarceration rates and policing they have seen since they became active and how the black family was systematically disintegrated in America. Setting the backdrop for today's issues of police violence and mass incarceration, movements against these issues are seen as a new civil rights movement.

Karen James with Washington State Community Corrections Officer Patty McGuiness and Mindy Brumitt and Glen Knight, participants in the Community Parenting Alternative program (CPA). Offenders in the CPA program are released from prison and placed on electronic home monitoring devices to enable them to live at home and care for their children while completing their sentence. Washington State has offered this alternative to incarceration and its counterpart, FOSA, the Family & Offender Sentencing Alternative, since legislation was passed in 2010.
FOSA: http://www.doc.wa.gov/community/fosa/eligibility.asp

Ruth Kovacs interviews Harry Olsen, Phoenix Rising Transitions and Paris Taylor who recently released from prison after serving 23 years. Taylor participated in the weekly courses offered by Phoenix Rising Transitions at the Columbia River Correctional Institution, a men’s minimum-security releasing prison in Portland, Oregon. To help facilitate a successful homecoming to the community, Taylor will live at the PHOENIX Transition house which is designed to offer a safe, clean and sober place to live for people coming out of prison. http://www.phoenix-rising-transitions.org/ Harry Olsen: 503-866-1554, harryrobertolsen@frontier.com

Adam Carpinelli interviews Arun Gupta, a founding editor of the Indypendent magazine and was a founding editor of the Occupy Wall Street Journal. Arun will talk about the Portland Police Bureau and Multnomah County Sheriff's new racket with predatory financial companies stealing people's cash. Money is taken from all arrestees including those who are never convicted and upon release, replace their cash with a Numi Financial debit card. This company then steals the money of arrestees with multiple hefty fees. Discussion will also include the significance of this issue to activism in Portland such as the recent rallys and marches in solidarity with Ferguson. For more information: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/portland-stop-profitinghttps://indypendent.org

Audio

Carlos Chavez hosts part two of a two part series on the 2012 highlights of his radio journalism group in MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility.

This time they focus on a field recording exercise that was done by one of the students. He interviews Steve Llanes from the Office of Minority Services and other youth as they prepare for one of the sweat lodge ceremonies at MacLaren.

Carlos facilitates educational workshops at MacLaren for the youth incarcerated there. MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility is the largest facility in Oregon for incarcerating youth. Most of these youth face sentences ranging from 3 to 7 years or longer. During their time on the facility these young men have access to a high school education, college courses and job skills training.

Through an organization called Hope Partnership they are offered additional workshops and classes that expose the youth to creative outlets, literacy and cultural awareness. Morpheus Youth Project, a fiscally sponsored non profit that Carlos runs, collaborates with Hope Partnership to facilitate a Radio Journalism Class (as well as other workshops).

In this segment of Prison Pipeline, host Grace E. Reed talks to Dave Dahl and friends from Dave's Killer Bread about the journey from inside the corrections system into owning and operating a successful popular bread bakery. Grace talks to Dave about how his company works with helping formerly incarcerated people into a stable progressive enviroment at his company, and the trials and tribulations that exist on the inside as well as the out.

Prior to these current positions, Shay Bilchik was an Assistant State Attorney in Miami, Florida for sixteen years, where he served as a trial lawyer, juvenile division chief, and Chief Assistant State Attorney. He was also the Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he advocated for and supported a balanced and multi-systems approach to attacking juvenile crime and addressing child victimization.

In 2007, Mr. Bilchik was the President and CEO of the Child Welfare League of America. Shay led CWLA in its advocacy on behalf of children through his public speaking, testimony and published articles, as well as collaborative work with other organizations. He worked closely with the CWLA Board of Directors, staff, and its public and private agency members on issues impacting the well being of children and families.

In 2001, 2004, 2005 and 2006, he was named among The NonProfit Times Power and Influence Top 50 for making his mark in the public policy arena and championing child welfare issues.

Host Grace Reed interviews guest Melissa Reardon, artist, healer and activist forming project for newly released inmates using creative expression through art and mask making as a tool for transformation and restoration.

Comments

Hi, I am starting to reach the end of my rope of resources, and I thought I'd try you guys and see if you have some advice or helpful programs for this sort of matter.

I have a close friend who has been on the run for a while (over 2 years). He was arrested and charged with 2 felonies, Burglary and something else similar, for going onto his own property that was supposed to be abandoned. The people who were living there didn't pay rent for over 1 year, were impossible to reach by telephone, notified the landlord twice in person that they were moving. The landlord was getting letters from the city for code violations, and abondonment, he's fairly certain one of both of their main utilities (water or electric) were shut off, mail piled up, mostly empty house, etc. He was on the property one day, removed a couple items, mostly just assessing the amount of work to be done, came back the next day, had been there for a while when the cops showed up. They asked if he had been inside the premises, he said yes, that he felt he was within his rights as landlord, cops said you thought wrong. Everyone, including public defense acted as though this was an open and shut case of guilt, so no research was done to find out if anyone was even living there to be burgled in the first place!!

We don't know what to do now. I thought I would be able to hire a lawyer eventually who could prove this whole thing to be ridiculous, but now I am finding out any lawyer would be minimum $5000, most likely much, much more! I don't understand a system that can charge someone with a bogus crime, and leave them to the wolves. It seems wrong to tell someone that if they don't have $10,000 for their own defense, then they may as well take the charge, do the time, and try to move on with their life. Is there any such thing as a lawyer who cares, and will take a case based more on values than money?

Do you guys have any programs that offer discounted criminal defense lawyers, or know how I can maybe represent him myself if I can get all the facts right, or get copies of police reports, etc.? Any advice at all would be helpful...

Do you want to know more about the topics we’ve been discussing on Prison Pipeline?

CR10 was presented with more than 3,000 folks participating in 200 workshops. Each organization is working hard to focus on their mission.
Listed below are some organizations and contact information that we have mentioned on Prison Pipeline and a few more that are additional sources of information.

National STOPMAX Campaign Taking the Next Steps. Concerning the use of isolation and devices of torture in U.S. prisons. Search Google for:
American Friends Service Committee’s (AFSC) National STOPMAX Campaign. - Human Rights Coalition - Lugman Abdullah with Youth Service, Inc. - Back to Society, Inc, HRC.

Ban the Box in your Community -All of Us or None (A great 23 minute DVD -Locked Up..Locked Out - that is available for a small donation. Telephone 1-415-255-7036 - X337 to order. Linda Evans from San Francisco and Susan Burton from Los Angeles and Portland’s own Patty Katz from Partnership for Safety and Justice (start with Google) are all working on this issue. You can email: info@prisonerswithchildren.org for a lot of excellent information. Legal Services for Prisoners with Children show a page on the web “10 Things You Can Do - To Support the Struggle for Prisoners’ Rights”

FILMS TO SEE:
The CRITICAL RESISTANCE 10th Anniversary Film Festival
Showed the following films. I’m not sure about the availability of these films, but perhaps if you Google the name of the films that interest you, there will be enough information to help you see these films.